


On My Knees

by iphis17



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Catholicism, M/M, queer pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-21
Updated: 2012-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-23 17:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphis17/pseuds/iphis17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caelan converses with a God in whom he does not entirely believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On My Knees

**Author's Note:**

> Written on the twenty-first day of January in the year 2012.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I believed. I really did, no matter how strange and out-of-character that may seem now, looking upon my deeds with the clarity that retrospect brings. I wasn't very devout, of course, but devout enough.

I would kneel in church when I could make it there, though I didn't manage to every Sunday, and sometimes it wasn't even a Sunday – I would be driven there, by Himself, I imagined, when I was feeling exceptionally corrupt, exceptionally broken, exceptionally mortal. I prayed, almost constantly, speaking to God like he was just another voice in my head, and I loved Him like I loved no other. He was the first man I ever fell for, the first human.

The War started when I was sixteen. I was filled with passion and fire, at first, convinced myself that it was once again His will, His plan. And then I had to refuse to even consider that thought, because everything— _everything_ —fell apart.

It was on that battlefield that I met Dusk, on that battlefield that I lost everything and everyone that I had ever cared for, because as soon as I became enamored, as soon as my heart was tied to another man, he was snatched away from me, transformed into a heathen creature, and it was through him that I lost my faith, because if there was ever a God, He would not have let that happen.

That wasn't when I was Infected, but I was changed by it. I stopped trying to humble myself, stopped trying to grind myself into the dirt, because I was struck, for the first time, that if there was nothing after this life, then I would not have lived. For the first time, I became proud of what I was.

Even when I was persecuted, for being a traitor, a heathen, an aberration, even when I wasn't even human anymore, nothing broke me, because I knew, and that knowledge was simple. It was that there was nothing that I regretted that outweighed that which I had loved.

And so here I am, opening once more my heart to Hell knows who. Maybe there is something greater, maybe there is not, but it is my choice and my choice alone to believe or not to.

So, Great Being, dear Universe, Goddess and God, here I am. I expose myself before you, make myself vulnerable before you, for you and you alone.

I am Caelan. I am not human. I am a sinner in the end, and I will never be anything other.

I have killed, I have stolen, and I have destroyed. I have destroyed everything, and I am not sorry, because it was all worth it, in the end.

They tell me that my greatest sin was that of love, though, and perhaps it was. The love of my life was not a deity, was not a mortal. He was a being of legend, just as much as You must be.

If you are there, then I thank you. I can only thank you, for all that you have allowed me, for all the chances you have given me. I thank you most for my life, because it has been amazing, and at the same time I thank you for Dusk, for my love, for he and my existence are now synonymous, have perhaps always so been.

I thank you, but in the end, I cannot believe in you, cannot rekindle my faith. I know you can understand this, maybe even applaud this spirit, this resolve.

I owe you nothing.


End file.
